Scenario

As a manager of a health care facility, you have had numerous patient complaints regarding the accessibility and readability of their requested patient records. Some of the complaints include incomplete chart files, disorganized records, illegible information because of multiple handwriting styles, and quality of printing with the copy or fax transmissions. In addition, many of the complaints concern the vast amount of time waiting until the files can be located, assembled, copied, and delivered. Some wait times were up to 3 weeks in length, delaying patient treatment. Lastly, the complaints also center on the $0.75 per-page fee that the patients and physician offices pay for the hard copies created from the original pages. Even with this charge, the medical records department remains a large cost expenditure for the health care facility because of break downs in the chart retrieval machinery, personnel costs, supplies, and maintenance of equipment that is associated with creating hard copies of the original charts.

Part 1 Task:

As manager of this health care facility, create a presentation from a cost-savings point of view to address the following questions:

Question 1: What steps could be taken to streamline the medical records department process?

Question 2: How could this department be incorporated into the Health Level Seven (HL7) electronic system in terms of application, collection, warehousing, and evaluation regarding the storing and retrieval of patient charts?

Question 3: Outlines implementation requirements for using the DBMS

Question 4: Compares and contrasts design methods for database management

Question 5: Constructs basic databases that can be used for healthcare decision making

Question 6: Discuss the file acquisition process required to extract data

Question 7: Identify healthcare applications that access the databases